After a long winter, we’re finally moving into the season of spring. For many green witches, kitchen witches, and herbal magic practitioners, this means it’s finally garden season again! Today, I want to share a simple garden blessing ritual that is perfect for the start of gardening season. Whether you’re starting your spring, summer, or fall garden, this is the ritual for you!
Busy Witchy Mama is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. This post may contain affiliate links through Amazon or other affiliate programs. If you choose to make a purchase through an affiliate link, I make a small commission at no additional cost to you. All opinions are my own and I only recommend products that I believe in. Read my full disclosure here. Thank you for your support!
A garden blessing is essentially like a prayer for fertility and abundance over your soil. While it’s not necessary to have a successful planting season, garden blessings can help you tap into the energy of the soil after a long period of dormancy. You know, kind of like we have at the start of spring! Want to learn more about Ostara? Check out this post.
Garden blessings help you reconnect to the energetic cycle of new beginnings and can be a wonderful way to leave offerings to your garden spirits and protectors, if you work with them. They can also help infuse the energy of abundance and fertility into your garden space, which is what you want when planting a garden, right?
This ritual in particular is also functional as well as magical. I’m a busy witch with very little spare time on my hands. I don’t have hours to spend on elaborate rituals. A big part of this garden blessing actually includes garden prep. If you have to do it anyway, why not infuse a little magic into the process?
What Do I Need To Know Before I Begin?
If you’re in an area that’s still experiencing snow and freezing temperatures, you can still perform this garden blessing. You’ll just have to do the actual garden prep part after the thaw. If you want to use this as part of your Ostara celebrations, skip the prep steps, and go plant that blessing candle directly into the snow.
This blessing isn’t just good for tapping into the energy of Ostara, though. In my area, we don’t have a summer growing season. It’s simply too hot to grow anything except maybe okra. I actually perform this blessing again around August when I get ready for the fall growing season (which is my most successful growing season anyway…) If you have multiple growing seasons like me, feel free to perform this whenever you need it!
In fact, you can even come back mid season and do this blessing again if the garden needs an extra boost of energy (and compost)!
You can even perform this blessing in a container garden, kitchen countertop herb garden, hydroponics garden, or community garden if you wish. Any place where you will attempt to grow living plants can benefit from a garden blessing. Heck, you could perform this blessing on your lawn or go out into the woods or a secluded part of your local park and bless a tree or bush that looks like it needs some love.
If it’s the growing season in your area, you will begin preparing your garden space with this ritual, so you’ll need to do a little planning beforehand.
You’ll want to make sure you gather up any garden tools, compost, soil amendments, seeds, or plant starts that you’ll need in order to get your garden going.
What Kind of Garden Should I Plant?
As you begin planning out your spring garden and prepping the soil, you’ll want to consider what you plan to grow. Think about your budget, growing season, and access to seeds, soil, and plants.
I’m not going into full detail about what and how to plant because even within the different growing zones, your microclimate can impact what you are able to grow. That’s a huge topic to tackle, and Google will serve you better there.
However, I do have a few great ideas for themed witchy gardens that you can use for inspiration when planning out your spring garden!
- Manifestation Garden – Fill with plants that correspond to a theme like love, fertility, prosperity, psychic development, health, abundance, happiness, etc.
- Elemental Garden – Plant different flowers or veggies that link to the energy of earth, air, fire, water, and spirit.
- Culinary Herb Garden – Fill your herb garden up with your favorite common kitchen staples, and infuse your cooking with some home grown kitchen witchery.
- Fairy Garden – If you work with the Fae, a garden filled with fairy preferences could be a fun way to honor that energy.
- Astrological Garden – Plant herbs and flowers that correspond to a specific astrological sign.
- Color Garden – Work some color magic by planting vegetation that blooms all in one color or in a rainbow of shadees.
- Gothic Garden – Fill your garden space with herbs, flowers, plants, and veggies that grow and bloom in shades of black, dark purple, and deep red for a gothic twist on gardening. (Here’s a fun website with tons of goth garden inspiration.)
- Beginner Garden – Head to the garden center and buy a bunch of beginner friendly, hard to kill plant starts. (This post has 10 great beginner friendly ideas.)
- Baneful Garden – If you dare, fill your garden space with toxic, deadly baneful plants to use in curses, hexes, and other spells. Maybe don’t do this one if you have children or pets who roam your yard, though… (Check out the Alnwick Poison Garden for Inspiration!)
How to Perform a Garden Blessing
I’ve broken up this garden blessing ritual into two parts – the manual labor and the blessing. That way, you can start wherever is best for you, and come back to one part or another later as needed.
Best time to cast: This spell is perfect for starting your spring garden at Ostara, but it also works well whenever you start the next season’s garden, or whenever your plant babies need a boost.
Circle casting is not needed.
What you'll need for the manual labor part:
Materials:
- Seeds or plant starts
- Garden tools for digging, tilling, and garden prep
- Compost, fertilizer, or soil amendments
- Pots and potting soil if container gardening
- water
How to prep:
This first part won’t sound very magical, but I promise you, there is so much magic in resurrecting a dormant garden space after winter! It’s all in how you approach things. Maintain positive thoughts of growth and abundance. Work with love, and your garden will thank you for it. So much of witchcraft is really just approaching mundane tasks with intention.
Step 1: Begin by gathering up everything you’ll need to start your garden. Get your tools, compost, seeds, plants, etc. Nothing kills a garden project faster than having to stop every 5 minutes to grab supplies.
Step 2: It’s time to give your garden space some TLC. Pick up trash and debris. Pull any remaining dead plants. Pull back plastic, cardboard, frost cloth, or anything you used to cover the space. If container gardening, clear patio space and wash out used pots with a bit of warm, soapy water.
Step 3: Next, let’s get that soil ready. Till it up if that’s your method. Add in lots of quality compost to replenish tired soil. Choose a fertilizer method for plant starts. You’ll use this later if you planted seeds. Personally, I use a powdered organic fertilizer called Plant Magic because, well, plant magic… but use whatever you like!
Step 4: Now, start planning where things will go, and get planting! Perform this part with love and mindfulness. Make a ritual of it. Bring your awareness into the feeling of the soil in your hands, the sun on your back, the smell of the compost and fresh herbs, the weight of the plants or seeds. Talk to them with love. There have been studies done that show how plants grow better when given love and positive energy than with hateful words and abuse. If you’ve got the space and skills, you can even arrange your plants to grow in shapes like stars, pentacles, or spirals.
Step 5: Water well. Give plant starts a little hit of fertilizer. You’ll do the same with seeds after they’ve grown up a bit.
That’s all for the manual labor part. If you want to take it a step further, now you can perform a garden blessing. You can bless your plant babies to keep them safe (a wonderful way to give your garden attention at Beltane!) or add the energy of fertility and abundance (the perfect way to infuse the new beginnings energy of Ostara).
How to Perform the Garden Blessing
Materials:
- Incense associated with growth, abundance, or fertility
- Patchouli, mint, basil, or frankincense would be good
- Some water safe crystal chips,
- amethyst, aventurine, clear quartz, or moss agate
- A green candle – beeswax is ideal since it’s nature safe
- If you don’t have beeswax candles, it’s best to burn your candle in a candle holder, especially if this is a food garden.
Bonus materials: an offering to your garden spirits if you wish. Honey, fresh water, juice, or home grown dried herbs work nicely!
How to cast:
Step 1: Gather your supplies. Ground yourself, and tap into the energy of your garden space.
Step 2: Plant your candle in the soil (or your candle holder if needed). Keep it far enough away from plants so as not to burn them and afar enough way from sowed seeds not to dislodge them. If there’s still snow on the ground, plant your candle right into the snow to infuse some warm, solar energy to the frozen soil. Imagine the candle stick infusing fertile energy directly into the soil. Light it, and say something like …
“May this candle bring the warmth of the sun and fertile energy to help these plants grow and thrive.”
Step 3: Light your incense and waft it over your garden space, cleansing it of harmful energies, and filling it with fertile, abundant energy. As you work, recite these words…
Winter’s reign has seen it’s end
And spring brings warmth and light
I call the garden spirits forth
That you can now take flight
From your rest so dark and long
Awaken now with birth
You shall in time grow green and strong
Through soil of Mother Earth
Step 4: Plant the crystal chips along the corners and edges on your garden to add in some crystal energy. You can even activate it like a grid if you know how to do this. Please research carefully when choosing crystal chips as some react with water and leach toxic chemicals that you don’t want in your food.
Step 5: Allow the candle and incense to finish burning down, or extinguish and save for another blessing later in the season. Don’t forget to take on the mundane work of watering, fertilizing, and pest management. That way, your plant babies can grow big and strong.
There you have it! Your garden space is now blessed and ready for spring.
Tell Us About Your Experience
Do you have a favorite Ostara garden ritual? Planning out a themed garden? Let us know in the comments what you’re growing this year!
If you like what you read, remember to sign up for our newsletter, and get busy witchy content sent straight to your inbox. While you’re at it, share this post and follow us on social media.
